


The Last Skate

by Pie (potteresque_ire)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Established Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov, Forgetful Victor Nikiforov, Ice Skating, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-24 23:29:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13821738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potteresque_ire/pseuds/Pie
Summary: Victor never imagined the biggest surprise he would offer in his career would be a fall during his last skate.





	The Last Skate

**Author's Note:**

> The three minute break and how it applies to scenarios of skater’s memory loss and music issues are described in  the referee instructions for Skate Canada. I imagine Victor and Yuuri’s last skate to happen on a bigger stage (Worlds, perhaps?), but these rules are easy to follow and I hope they’re sufficiently accurate. This is my first venture into YOI fandom and I hope I do this pairing justice. Crits are always welcomed! Many thanks to aibidil for the quick and thorough beta.

Victor has spent his career chasing surprises, doling them out. He never thought the biggest surprise he would offer is this—

—is now, in the last skate of his career. His landing foot wobbles. His ankle gives. Then, Victor Nikiforov, seven-time world champion, is sprawled on the ice.

He takes in the open mouths in the audience. The hands on the open mouths. The wide eyes and absolute silence. The utter shock and disbelief that Victor’s dreams are made of.

That his dreams _were_ made of. Before Yuuri.

_Yuuri._

He props himself up on his palms. His left wrist moans, and his boots feel heavy. Impossibly heavy. He tilts his chin, and the golden blades, the Russian flag greet his eyes. He has carried both for so long that he has forgotten their weight. The same weight that made him gasp years ago, when Evgeni Plushenko dropped his own gold medal on Victor’s tiny palms. “Win them for our country,” he said.

To that memory, that reminder, Victor stands. It’s a skater’s call, a champion’s duty, to keep going, to skate until the music dies.

And the music is still playing.

Except Victor has forgotten what to do. The jumps, the step sequences … they’ve deserted him. He rests his hands on his waist, trusting the light dance of his fingers to jolt his memory—like when he tries to remember where he misplaced his keys, or, before Yuuri, where he had misplaced his body the night before, when his need for touch had become unbearable. Still, nothing. The forgetfulness that has so defined him off ice has finally decided to join him on it.  He shakes his head, his legs wander to a halt at the center of the rink. The inner voice in his mind, the one that for years has commanded him to keep going and winning, to ignore it all, weakens with each scrape on the ice, as if Victor has stifled it with the fall.

And the music is still playing.

Except Victor is distracted, mesmerized by a faint tremor in his chest. It’s fleeting and unsure, like the murmurs from the crowd. It’s unsettling, like fear, like anxiety. It’s fragile and beautiful, and Victor cannot tear his attention away.

He tries to remember. A skater’s heart. Memories of his own are faint, too, the _thump, thump, thump_ on the ice of a decrepit rink in Khabarovsk. Yakov has never demanded that much from him, that Victor was to leave his skater’s heart in what must now be stale water, by a home that never was. Yakov has asked about it himself, when Victor’s skating … no, when Victor, in his words, _lacks life_. “Look at Georgi”, he said, even if that skater’s heart was as cold and unforgiving as the ice they were on.

It’s just that… it’s easier to have a skater’s heart stowed away, where its fragility is known but not seen, lest shattered. Victor had forgotten about his own heart until the seagulls cried in Hasetsu. He’d forgotten how it sounded, until Yuuri invited him into his arms; until Yuuri’s heart pulsed a lullaby, slow and sweet, as they drifted into slumber; until Yuuri’s heart fluttered wildly, passionately, as Yuuri prepared to claim gold on the ice, as they prepared to claim each other on their bed.

Victor imagines his skater’s heart beating like Yuuri’s. In his dreams, his skater’s heart beats exactly like Yuuri’s.

 _Yuuri_.

 _Victor_ . He hears the answering call. He sees Yuuri ripping off his skate guards, then slipping onto the ice through a broken dam of officials. People are shouting. The officials, at Yuuri. Yurio, _Davai_. Yakov, in his rapid fire, perhaps demanding a check for head wounds that Victor doesn’t have, or for another shot on the podium that Victor has forgotten to care about. Victor is lost, and all he cares about is Yuuri coming to find him…

Not yet. Yuuri makes an abrupt turn towards the referee. _Three minutes_ . Yuuri’s tone is fleeting and unsure. _Please spare us a three minute break, our chance to complete…_ .

Yuuri bows, and Victor knows exactly what it means. Yuuri, with his legendary stamina, will not rest until Victor gets what he needs to re-orient himself. He and his deceptive strength will fight for Victor if all the ice melts and ISU confiscates every skating boot in the world. Victor will complete his program, will bring his career to conclusion. Yuuri’s, too—Yuuri, who has completed his last skate. _Us_ , he said. _Our chance_.

Victor smiles, his arms opening by instinct as Yuuri glides towards him, the glint on his ring finger the flame of Victor’s lighthouse.

Yuuri smiles back. But his smile is unsettled, his large, emotive eyes etched with worry as they too often are.

Victor should tell him, one day, that getting lost is … just Victor. Victor forgets. Things like where he is, why he’s there, where he’s going. Things like telling his loved ones that he’s prone to losing things, losing himself occasionally. But Victor is good at staying put, at keeping faith that help will come because there’ll be people who’ll love him. People who’ll find him.

Even after a dozen flutes of champagne.

The referee blows her whistle. The music stops the moment Yuuri finds Victor’s hand, as their rings touch and shine in the harsh light of what was once their battlefield. Victor raises Yuuri’s hand to his lips and kisses it, as he does whenever Yuuri offers himself to him.

This, Victor doesn’t forget.

Yuuri’s downcast gaze flickers upward. He lets out a breath, and the tremor in his hands eases. Yuuri’s hands tremble too often, too, on the ice.

 _Yuuri_ , Victor calls again.

Yuuri’s eyes sparkle, the way they do when he’s searching for an answer. He holds Victor’s hand and looks around. A lone clap erupts in the audience. A second later, another. A sparse clatter joins in next, then, a fuller, denser one, until the entire audience are clapping, steadily but lightly. Like heartbeats.

“Are you with me?” Yuuri asks, and Victor nods. He’s with Yuuri, as long as Yuuri wants him.

Yuuri smiles again — he is so beautiful, and after the kiss, calm — and he turns so they face each other, their fingers still locked. “Chase me like I’ve chased you,” he whispers, as he skates backwards, his hand slipping away.

Victor’s limbs move on their own accord. His arms swing and his legs bend for one purpose, for the singular need to contact the man he loves. _Stammi Vicino_. They propel Victor around the rink as Yuuri moves to the rhythm from the crowd. Then Yuuri makes a half turn and he’s by Victor’s side, like they’ve done so often in practices. Victor tastes the same frustration on his tongue, from not being able to meet Yuuri with his lips. He feels the same shiver on his skin, from the warmth dissipating between their parted bodies.

These, too, Victor doesn’t forget.

Yuuri looks at Victor, a reassuring gleam in his eyes as he transitions into a simple step sequence.

Victor tries to follow, but his muscles are still dazed, his coordination awkward. The cells in their fibers have survived the fall, but they’re still lost, still missing a guide. The claps grow louder; still, each movement feels like its ghost, familiar but absent. Victor stumbles, and Yuuri catches him before he falls. Again.

Then, Victor hears music.

It resumes the moment he and Yuuri have each other. The first notes of the same piece Victor was skating to, as Yuuri holds Victor so close that his heartbeats reverberate in Victor’s chest. Even Yuuri looks surprised, and Victor’s memory supplies, vaguely, that even if a break is granted, skaters are only allowed to continue, but not restart, their programs. Yuuri turns to the referee, then follows her own equally puzzled stare up the stands, to the small window of the audiovisual room by the exit.

Yuuri’s eyes sparkle again. He keeps his gaze steady at the window, then, he places his hand on his heart.

The music stops as abruptly as it began.

Another piece follows, also starting from its first note; a whisper that takes over lightly, gently, not for a moment intruding on the memories of the one before.

The music from Yuuri’s free skate fills the stadium. Yuuri’s heart responds to it, and Victor can feel every pulse, every flutter from where they remain in contact. Yuuri slips his hands to Victor’s waist and Victor remembers too, remembers how they’ve been choreographing a pairs skate from this music. How the first movement begins with a residual warmth on Victor’s lips, because a kiss was how the project began. His muscles act, his palms tracing up Yuuri’s sides. Yuuri spreads his arms, like wings, as he finds Victor at fingertips soft and light in their imagination, swaying to the wind about to rise beneath them as they prepare for flight.

Skating, Yuuri said as he suggested the movement, feels like flying. Victor never understood that. Flying is too uncomfortable, too riddled with anxiety—the incessant delays, the endless hours of being confined in a space neither here nor there; the elusive peace from little sleep, broken by dreams of landings so faraway, so uncertain. But he can feel Yuuri’s heartbeats in him, pointing to the wind’s every whim on the ice. They show Victor how to read the headwinds, how to stay steadfast against them. They show him the beauty in turbulence, the unexpected triumph of marking the air where headwinds and tailwinds collide. Skating has never been easy for Yuuri, but his heartbeats knows to make peace with the wind’s temperament, to find music in its spontaneity. They share it all with Victor, the knowledge that Victor can twirl to the breeze like an autumn leaf, that he can sink his knees, leap and trust the symphony of gusts and air to carry him to wherever he wants to go.

Yuuri’s heartbeats guide without words, unlike the voice. They ask, in silence, about the things Victor wants. The things he misses.

Victor’s heart, on the ice. Their routine is changing; the pairs skate has morphed a singles skate. He and Yuuri are now skating side by side, no longer as one and but each as himself. Victor has never copied a skate before, not even Yuuri’s. And yet, something inside him knows. Maybe it’s the heartbeats—the heartbeats that haven’t stopped, despite his body no longer in contact with Yuuri’s; the heartbeats that are on—no, inside—Victor’s chest. They’re his own heartbeats, Victor realizes, and just like in his dreams, his skater’s heart beats exactly like Yuuri’s. Victor entrusts himself to it, makes himself its home as Hasetsu has made itself for him. Yuuri’s face, the scratch of his blades fades into background as Victor takes off, soaring over terrains he has never visited before. Up there, he sees the audience, staring and stone still. Up there, he sees the judges throwing caution into the wind as they crumple the scorecards, enraptured by Victor’s flight to Yuuri’s music.

To the music that lives. How could Victor ever assume music will die? Victor remembers now, remembers how Yuuri creates music with his body. And Yuuri is living, not just by the Kiss and Cry where he’s grasping the half wall, the glint of his ring guiding, grounding Victor in case he drifts too far again. Yuuri is also living inside Victor, and Victor arches into an Ina Bauer to display it to the world. _Don’t ever take your eyes off me_ . The music is swelling to its finale. Victor picks up speed and he lets the wind carry him, high, into Yuuri’s signature quad flip, his arms raised above his head and his fingers soft as wings; he transitions into a step sequence, his featherlight feet fluttering to a journey of triumphs and hardships, of years of carrying himself, and his motherland and her pride on the ice. They—no, he, Victor Nikiforov—decides the journey has been a happy one, despite the pain, the frustrations, the boredom. He rides the air one more time and pulls himself into a flying sit spin, marveling at the scenes around him, changing and returning. That has been his career on ice too, a carousel of training and competition, the same happenings and people, despite new records being broken, despite old ones being torn apart like the rink in Khabarovsk. He decides his career has also been a happy one. One without regrets.

But it’s time for him to go. He slows and finally—

—he stops, and finds himself in the same pose Yuuri has ended every one of his free skates since they met, his right hand on his heart, his left hand dedicating it to and reaching for his love by the rink side. Yuuri’s love, who is Victor.

And now, Victor is dedicating his heart to and reaching for Yuuri.

But it’s not enough, not now, not for Victor. Yuuri has always been the late bloomer, the patient one who thinks and over-thinks before he acts, who, until not so long ago, couldn’t even articulate what he wanted. Victor has never been like that. His heart — the one he carries off-ice — fell the second Yuuri wrapped his arm around him and dipped him on the banquet floor; his heart delivered him from St Petersburg to Fukuoka airport within seventy-two hours of Yuuri’s video post. He breaks the pose and speeds to the side of the rink, where Yuuri catches him in his arms.

“Oh Victor, you forgot to thank the audience,” Yuuri chides, his voice and gaze gentle. His hand, so warm against Victor’s own, leads them back to the rink, to the rain of flowers and stuffed poodles showering the ice, and then, to a deep bow. Victor brushes his hair back and takes in the sight and sound around them. The cheering. The crying. The dancing and stomping. The deafening chant: _Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!_  Scattered memories from the minutes past snow in his mind. His wrist feels sore, as do his ankles.  “What did I do?” he whispers.

“You’ve surpassed their wildest imagination,” Yuuri answers, beaming, his cheeks a brilliant pink. He turns to Victor, closes in and holds Victor’s face in his palms, and Victor has never lived, loved more than this moment in his life. “And now we’ll surprise them by doing exactly what they want.”

He leans forward, and they kiss.


End file.
